OSS and Patent

EDUCAUSE has posted a new Patents resource page. The page features resources such as information about copyright lobby groups, government policy surrounding open source software, and working with patents in the higher education arena.

To update my post on the Blackboard patent, here is some more detail on the requested reexamination of the patent claim and the Sakai Foundation's response.

As Paul Erickson notes (thanks, Paul!), the news initially started bubbling up when the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) announced that it has formally asked the Patent Office to reexamine and ultimately cancel all 44 claims of Blackboard's patent on e-learning systems.

The request has demonstrated the very real sense of unity and common purpose among the educational open source software community. It was filed on behalf of the Sakai Foundation (sakaiproject.org), the Moodle Community (moodle.org), and the ATutor Community (atutor.ca).

In their press release, the Sakai Foundation refers to the "the surrounding fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) being spread by Blackboard", and states: "We, the Sakai Foundation, consider the Blackboard patent to be a prime example of a bad patent in the area of educational software.  It is a threat to open source developers, providers and users of educational software."

...Or so says the grapevine. I've just heard via John Norman, Director of CARET and Chair of the Sakai Board, that the patent claim filed by Blackboard (#6,988,138: Alcorn et al, Internet-based education support system and methods) has been rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

[Update 26/01/07: Apologies to John, who I've misquoted here. He confirms the patent has not been rejected, but the USPTO has accepted the SFLC request for a reexam. See my subsequent post for further details].